David Thomas: “I also wish to take a few minutes, as others have, to talk about some of the issues that will be before us. We have a…”

“I also wish to take a few minutes, as others have, to talk about some of the issues that will be before us. We have a great opportunity now to move forward on these issues, many of which we have discussed in the last session. Many are ready to be acted upon, and I hope we can do that. We need to talk about taxes and simplifying taxes. We need to talk about ensuring that we have the tax support there to create jobs and strengthen the economy. We seem to be moving in the right direction. I think the tax reductions have proven themselves to be useful, but many of them, particularly on taxes such as the estate tax, unless that is made permanent so people can have confidence in their investments, they really do not fully do what we hoped they would do. We need to continue to work to keep America safe; security is probably our top priority. We have made a considerable amount of change in that area. We need to continue to evaluate that, of course, and ensure that we have the best. I hope we can come back to deal with the issue of energy--clean, economic energy. That is, again, one of the basic issues in creating jobs, in growing an economy, and one that we have worked on now for several years. We had a long meeting yesterday. We had a series of meetings to talk about the need for conservation, to talk about the need for efficiency. We talked about the need for alternative sources of energy--renewable energy as well as domestic production.”